Louis Kraft

It’s sad that you just can’t rewrite history and the past. You have to live with your baggage whether it’s personal or national. Countries and their governments, especially the ones on the winning side of a conflict, try to do it all the time. People try to do it too; you and I have probably done it and politicians and generals have made careers of it, prompting a new definition of the word “spin”. As in “To provide an interpretation of (a statement or event, for example), especially in a way meant to sway public opinion”. The spin wears pretty thin when it comes to the treatment of Native American peoples once you venture even slightly past your American history textbooks.

Be that as it may, if I could rewrite Geronimo’s history, I would wish that he never surrendered. Better to die in his beloved homeland or in the mountains of the Sierra Madre than to be betrayed by the General Miles and the U.S. Government and spend the rest of his life as a prisoner of war. He was lucky to not be murdered while in custody like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, although he probably didn’t consider that lucky when looking back at his incarceration. He was not charged with any crimes, the “war” that he was a “prisoner of” ended when Gatewood convinced him to come in. He was not beaten despite the best effort of both the U.S. and the Mexican armies. He was not captured. He simply turned himself in when he saw that his people seemed to wish it and with assurances that they would be reunited with their families. Rewrite of history or no, one thing is for sure. He was a Bedonkohe Apache to the end.

Louis Kraft’s book does a great job of getting past the spin and relying on facts to give credit where credit is due for ending the Apache wars. Using archival material, he recreates the final campaign in which Gatewood did what the U.S. Army could not. He firmly places the credit to Gatewood without embellishing his character. Charles Gatewood was a complex human being caught up in a no-win situation between the Apaches he knew and respected, the army he made his life, and the people of Arizona and New Mexico. He had his flaws like anyone else but he pushed through them to come to that final settlement with Geronimo. It is nice to see Kraft give him the credit that he never received in his day. All of us know Geronimo’s name; hopefully this book will mean that more of us know Gatewood’s.… (mais)

"We can only imagine what went through Ned Wynkoop’s mind as he read of the butchery. He must have been shattered. It mattered not that the dead were people he may or may not have met, they were people who thought they were safe, safe because he gave his word."


Working for the First Colorado Volunteers during the Civil War, Edward W. Wynkoop proved to be an outspoken advocate of human rights for all people. After the Sand Creek massacre, he became a U.S. Indian agent and fought for Cheyenne and Arapaho rightsin a time when few whites were on his side. This biography is about an important person in Colorado history who has rarely received mention before now.… (mais)